Refugee studies: the challenge of translating hope into reality

It is one thing for
rigorous research to influence policy, and another for that policy to then go
an and achieve its intended positive outcome. James Souter argues that Refugee
and Forced Migration studies has an important, yet ultimately subsidiary role
in the task of improving the lives of refugees and forced migrants

David Turton once argued that ‘there
is no justification for studying, and attempting to understand, the causes of
human suffering if the purpose of one’s study is not, ultimately, to find ways
of relieving and preventing that suffering’. Many researchers working within
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies agree, and seek to fulfil what has been
described as a ‘dual
imperative’ within the discipline: to produce
rigorous research, while at the same time influencing policy and practice in
ways which ultimately improve the lives of refugees and forced migrants. Citing
both ideas in his speech at the 30th
Anniversary Conference of the Refugee Studies
Centre (RSC) at the University of Oxford, James
Milner underscored the centre’s aim of bridging
the divides between scholarship, policy and practice. Similarly, a journal set
up by students of the centre’s MSc course, the Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration,
sees its ultimate goal as ‘protecting and advancing the human rights of
individuals who have been forcibly displaced’.

Refugee and
Forced Migration Studies clearly has the strong potential to influence policy
and practice in ways which ultimately improve the lives of refugees and forced
migrants. There are strong links between academic institutions such as the RSC
and bodies such as the Policy
Development and Evaluation Service (PDES) of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and researchers often
move between research, policy and field-based positions, thereby blurring the
boundaries between them.

Abstract and theoretical work on refugees and
forced migration can potentially make an important contribution to improving
debates and informing the development of better policies. Despite being
somewhat removed from the practical and political constraints which shape refugee
policy-making, normative work rooted in moral and political theory can, as Joseph Carens has argued, provide a critical standard
against which to evaluate current policies. In a panel discussion at the RSC
conference, both Alexander Betts and Matthew Gibney argued that restricting
the definition of the refugee to those fearing persecution is morally
arbitrary, given that other harms from which refugees flee, such as severe
socio-economic deprivation, are as worthy of protection and moral concern as
persecution. Removing this bias towards the persecuted may not be politically feasible
in the current climate, but such critiques serve to ensure that we do not
confuse the politically possible with the ideally desirable.

Yet despite the strong potential for such
research to contribute to improvements in the lives of refugees and forced
migrants, it is important to recognise a number of risks and limitations which
are inherent within this ‘dual imperative’. Firstly, if academics uncritically
accept policy categories as the basis for their research, then they may, as Turton has also argued, end up limiting themselves to
concepts which are more reflective of political priorities and institutional
mandates than they are of empirical reality. As Oliver Bakewell has contended,
engaging only with what is already on the policy agenda can render certain
groups of refugees and forced migrants invisible in research, leading him to
stress the importance of what he calls ‘policy irrelevant
research’.
It is also important that researchers ensure that a moral commitment to
assisting refugees and forced migrants does not generate preconceptions about
forced migration which then go on to distort research findings.

James Milner pointed out that the standard
published formats of academia – lengthy monographs and peer-reviewed journal
articles – hardly encourage often overstretched policy-makers to engage with
academic research on refugees and forced migrants. The ‘dual imperative’ cannot
be fully realised unless the fruits of academic research on refugees and forced
migrants are disseminated rapidly in accessible formats such as policy
briefings. Otherwise, as Loren Landau has pointed out,
research may emerge too late to have an impact on what are often hastily
constructed policy responses to humanitarian emergencies.

Moreover, we should not view the legitimacy of
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies as a field of enquiry as stemming entirely
from its impact, either potential or actual, on policy and practice. The
study of refugees and forced migration provides an entry point for analysis
into broader issues and themes which are important for their own sake, whether
processes of social transformation or the nature of the
state, or by serving as a litmus test for our moral beliefs and theories. An
insistence that the existence of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (and
academia more generally) is justified only by its practical impact could be
viewed as part of a process in which the academy is instrumentalised, and in
which anti-intellectual stereotypes of the ‘ivory tower’ as divorced from the ‘real
world’ serve to discredit research for research’s sake.

We should also not become overly fixated on the
importance and impact of refugee policy, or overstate its influence. As Landau
argued, in regions of the world such as Sub-Saharan Africa, law and policy can
have little or no influence on the lives of refugees at a local level. The
policies which most affect these refugees may not have the word ‘refugee’ in
the title, and may therefore be ignored by researchers and policy-makers
working on refugee issues. It is vital,
as anthropologists such as the RSC's current Director, Dawn Chatty,
emphasise, also to bear in mind the local level and the agency of forced
migrants in shaping policy and practice, as well as their ability to act in
spite of it.

Nor should we exaggerate the ability of research
to influence policy and practice, potentially important as it is. Research on
refugees and forced migration will inevitably be a longer-term, more indirect
and intangible engagement, which can clearly offer no immediate relief
to refugees and forced migrants, and whose impact can be very difficult to
track. Rigorous research may often be a necessary but insufficient condition
for improvements to the lives of refugees and forced migrants: there is a need
for a strong evidence-base to inform policy-making, but this is no guarantee of
the desired outcome. It is one thing for research to influence a policy (and
not even this is always achieved), and another for that policy to then go on to
have its intended positive outcome. Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has an
important, yet ultimately subsidiary role in the task of improving the lives of
refugees and forced migrants.

It is also extremely important not to
assume that research on refugees and forced migrants will invariably have a
benign impact. Indeed, there is a spectrum of possible outcomes of research
ranging from the extremely positive to the highly negative. At best, research
on refugees and forced migration is both rigorous and effects positive change.
In the middle of the spectrum, the untapped potential of high-quality research
for policy may remain within journal articles read only by fellow academics. At
the negative end of the spectrum, research may be sloppy but nevertheless
happen to have a positive impact. There is such thing as the useful fiction,
despite this being anathema to basic standards of academic research.

At worst, Refugee and Forced Migration
Studies may actually reinforce rather than challenge power asymmetries which
perpetuate displacement, and feed into the exclusionary agendas of states. B.S. Chimni has argued that the
shift from Refugee Studies to the broadened agenda of Forced Migration Studies
was fundamentally a response to the desire of ‘Northern’ elites to deter and
contain migration from the ‘South’, although this has been contested. We should be alert, as
Landau has also argued, to the
danger of realising the ‘dual imperative’ through an unequal international
division of scholarly labour in which universities in the global ‘South’ are
restricted to policy-relevant work and to feeding the more expansive research
agendas which are possible in the ‘North’.

At its very worst, the desire for
policy-relevance could conceivably be hypocritical and serve as a veneer which
has far more to do with the furtherance of a prestigious career in elite
research or policy-making institutions than it does with a genuine desire to
assist refugees and forced migrants. These potentially negative contributions
of research to global refugee policy and practice may be either intentional or
unintentional. While we can imagine a hard-headed realist who is quite happy
for his or her research outputs to be used by states to contain refugees,
negative outcomes may also be the result of well-meaning research, given that
researchers have limited control over how their research is interpreted, used
or co-opted after publication and dissemination.

Ultimately, the desire for research to have a
positive influence on refugee policy and practice often remains an aspiration
rather than a guaranteed or verified outcome. The word ‘hope’ is often a
recurring one in discussions of the impact of Refugee and Forced Migration
Studies. The RSC conference’s background paper stated that the event
‘will hopefully demonstrate how the academic debates can work for the
rights of refugees and other forced migrants’, while James Milner closed his
speech by expressing his hope that such progress will be made on refugees’
rights in the coming decades that there will be no need for a 50th
anniversary of the RSC. The challenge facing researchers is, through close
attention to both the potential and the pitfalls of policy-focused research, to
translate this hope into reality.

About the author

James Souter is a DPhil
candidate in International Development at the University of Oxford. His work
addresses ethical issues surrounding asylum and refugee protection,
particularly in relation to reparation for displacement. In his thesis, he is
developing the argument that asylum should at times act as a form of reparation
for past injustice. He holds an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies
from the University of Oxford, an MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights
from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, and a BA in
Philosophy and History with European Study from the University of Exeter. He is
a volunteer and trustee of the Oxford-based organisation, Asylum Welcome.

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